Paddy Ashdown: My family values

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/06/paddy-ashdown-my-family-values

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My family had a strong tradition of being in service to the crown or empire for 150 years before I was born. My father was in the Indian army and I was born in New Delhi while he was stationed there. I grew up being looked after by Indian Muslim servants and spoke Hindi as well as I spoke English by the time I was four. We moved to Northern Ireland in 1947, when I was five, when my father left the army to start a business as a pig farmer.

My mother's family were Irish. I was one of seven children, but my younger brother Richard died when he was 11 months old in India. My family was blighted by loss. When he was 14, my brother Robert died of leukaemia. And one of my sisters died in a car crash. Losing three children was very hard on my parents, who turned to spiritualism for comfort. Those losses affected me too, of course. I have always felt great anxiety when any of the children or grandchildren have been ill.

In Ireland, I learned so much about religion and religious divides. I was then sent away to the same boarding school that my father had attended in England. I was christened Jeremy, but I was known as Paddy after I was sent away to school.

My father's farming business failed, so by the time I was 17, he had to close it down. The best option for the family, he reasoned, was to go to Australia as part of the resettlement scheme, which was heartbreaking for me, as I was staying in the UK to start my training as a Royal Marine.

I met my wife-to-be, Jane, when we were both very young and we married young; I was 20, she was 21. It was a while before our first daughter was born. Like every military wife, Jane had to go where I was posted. She says we moved 25 times in the 10 or 12 years I was in the marines. She was the bedrock of my existence. Just as my mother had been the calm centre of the family who doled out huge amounts of unconditional love, while my father was more opinionated and adventurous, she played the same role. Sometimes she has said she could have done with fewer adventures during our marriage.

My mother died suddenly of a heart attack in 1978, and my father returned to England, only to be diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He died in our Yeovil family home in May 1980. I'm very proud that we looked after him until the end. I always wanted to please my father and looked up to him long after he was gone. He encouraged me to have a liberal attitude and not to be frightened of having my own opinions. And to do what was right whether I wanted to or not. My mother taught me the value of love and compassion.

Was I a good father? I made space for my children to have their own lives, but my political ambitions swallowed a lot of the time I could have spent being with them. Jane gets much more of the credit for bringing up two wonderful children. I adore being a grandfather. I have a grandson and granddaughter living in France with my daughter's family and two granddaughters in the UK from my son's family. It is my job to bring them adventures and encourage them to experience life and be mischievous with it.

• Paddy Ashdown will be at the Brewin Dolphin Borders book festival (12-15 June) in Melrose on 12 June, talking about his book The Cruel Victory: The French Resistance, D-Day and the Battle for the Vercors 1944 (William Collins, £20). Call 0844 357 1060 or visit bordersbookfestival.org